Knowledge mobilized during a creative music making task –an opportunity for integrated learning

Abstract

The aim of this contribution is to identify students’ knowledge mobilized during and after a creative music-making task inspired by two abstract paintings. The challenge is to point out musical knowledge ‘hidden’ in metaphorical expressions. This could foster a deeper understanding between specific music learning and learning in a broader sense. Learning music is a construction of competencies through specific activities, built on the interaction of procedural and declarative knowledge. Sometimes, the knowledge mobilized appears implicitly through ‘metaphorical connections’. During a creative music-making task, students can imagine sounds by a pathway towards reality, connecting different fragments of life and opening different possibilities. Students can make various connections to other fields of experience without linking their music making to theoretical concepts or musical knowledge, but by using their tacit knowledge. The research question is how the different kinds of knowledge mobilized by the students during a creative music-making task inspired by abstract paintings can be linked to music and transversal learning. For this study, twenty-nine small groups of students aged from 11 to 15 years old in seven different classes had been observed during a collective music-making task, inspired by two paintings from Klee and Kandinsky. The videos show two specific moments during the lesson. The first of these moments is that of students presenting their final productions to their classmates and teacher. The second moment captured the teacher’s talks with his or her students about the composition process and their creation in relation to the abstract painting used. The students’ subject-specific and metaphorical expressions are categorized. The analysis shows the different kinds of students’ musical knowledge observed during the two moments mentioned. Some declarative knowledge is mentioned explicitly, like scale, rhythm and timbre or tone (choice of instruments). A kind of procedural knowledge is explained through metaphorical expressions linked to visual elements (the play ‘dots’ and ‘lines’) or to other fields of experience (nature, objects) to describe their musical ideas and performances. The study shows that a part of knowledge that appears through metaphorical connections could contribute to a more holistic music learning. The most important implication of this study is that teachers are invited to take these findings into account in order to foster a broader understanding of music, as connected to other subjects and extra-musical human experiences.